Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Dispatches from the Island
Jonathan Franzen inextricably links writing to survival, to that which sustains life and keeps boredom and demise at bay.
As Fresh as a Cliché
We strive for originality, but perhaps old phrases should, like Mae West’s discarded lovers, be given a new chance with someone else.
Celebrating Uncertainty
What emerges clearly is a sense of Friel’s international importance. A chapter comparing him to Osborne and Storey liberates his plays from some of the confines that Irish scholarship restricts him to, showing clearly the universal significance of his work.
Just Make Do
With the slow death of God and religion, and the unsatisfactory nature of philosophy or what postmodernists call grand narratives, the beauty and pleasure of everyday life may be the only thing people can hold onto.
Labour Waits
Irish socialism was divided and weak in the early decades of the twentieth century, while the axis of trade union solidarity ran through Dublin and Merseyside, not Dublin, Belfast and Cork.
Strong Hand, Beloved Leader
A hoard of letters written by Germans to Hitler show a people keen to abdicate their responsibility and infantilise themselves, but they do not indicate any great enthusiasm for either Nazi ideology or territorial aggression.
The Beat on the Streets
From Phil Chevron of the Radiators to Stompin’ George Verschoyle spinning rockabilly hits at the Magnet Bar, it is the evocations of the Dublin music scene that stand out in a new miscellany of pieces on the city’s social and…
Challenging the State
The 1970s was a transitional decade for Ireland in which new social movements emerged and the state acted decisively against movements which were prepared to use lethal violence within the jurisdiction.
Clash of the Titans
The pragmatism associated with JM Keynes derives from a sustained optimism in the capacity of intelligence to inform and influence correct responses to a crisis. Hayek’s market morality reflects an altogether more pessimistic view of human behaviour.
A Ghost is Born
In a new biography, David Foster Wallace mostly emerges as a sympathetic figure, a troubled man whose fearsome intelligence seemed only to exponentially increase his unhappiness.
Bitter Truths
A new generation of Slovak poets has rejected the central themes of the communist and Christian past, now seen as lies or illusions. But the truths of post-communism are hard on the spirit.
Losing Our Cool
After the Gold Rush, after the slump, perhaps Ireland could just learn to relax, and regain its creativity and its cool.